


All the King's Horses

by perdiccas



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dark, Dubious Consent, F/M, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-27
Updated: 2009-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:13:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdiccas/pseuds/perdiccas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Moody,' they call her when they're feeling nice, 'unstable' when they're not. She once hears Monica say to Micah, "Her mind's like Humpty Dumpty, baby. Ain't nothing no one can do to put it back together."</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the King's Horses

Their mission is simple; it doesn’t need two, but Elle reckons old habits are hard to break. They crouch beside the road, watching as storm clouds gather, trapping against their skin that prickling heat that lingers even in the midnight air. They don’t talk, not much, or at least, not to each other. She thinks Sylar does it to taunt her, always picking her to be his partner.

He never asks how come she isn’t dead. She figures he doesn’t care (never cared).

Clean and quick, those were their orders: take out the scouts and get back in time for the main event. But Sylar doesn’t do simple, can’t do low-key and when the jeep hurtles round the corner, Sylar’s there, arm extended, flipping it onto its roof. Elle waits, watches as the soldiers crawl, disoriented, through the shattered windshield. Sylar grabs one with his mind, pins him to a rock; she knows that sneer he wears as he stalks in closer.

But she doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to watch him kill; it isn’t fair, not when it isn’t her. She zaps a solider of her own, and it’s too hard, maybe, too much.

“Oops,” she giggles as the jeep ignites. Sylar barrels towards her, gathers her in his arms as the soldier he’s been teasing is hastily rent in two.

“Are you crazy?” he hisses in her ear when they tumble to the ground.

“That’s what they say,” she laughs. She’s so broken deep inside even Pom-Pom’s blood can’t save her (never really saved her).

The smell of gasoline is heavy in the air. She wants to sit and watch it burn, get close enough to feel the searing heat against her skin. In the distance lightning crashes and the clouds above them cluster tighter; the air is alive with that buzzing, _buzzing_ that echoes in her veins. He brushes his fingers over her cheek; she can see the ticking behind his eyes. Isn’t it just like _Gabriel_ to think he can mend what no one else can?

He pins her down when she tries to stand, ignores her when she squeals. The flames reach the gas tank; he covers her body with his as white-hot shrapnel falls like rain. She hates him when she feels him die, a pointed sliver of windshield impaled through his heart and laughs maniacally at his misfortune when with a gasping breath he lives again.

There’s blood splattered on his face and in the blue clap of lightning illuminating the sky, his heavy brow looks cruel.

Against her thigh he’s hard.

She squirms, tries to roll away but he holds her tighter, broad hands painful at her wrists. The soil gathers in her hair, grounds her when she tries to shock him. He rubs himself against her, panting, and she remembers when she thought she was the one to make him like this. Elle turns her head, gulps down the copper tang in the air around them. He’s left the soldiers scattered like discarded toys: snapped, crushed and gutted.

She thinks Sylar’s as broken as his watch, as unfixable as her. She doesn’t know why the slaughter always gets him hard, but she’s wet too.

He ducks his head and licks at a crimson slash of blood that’s splattered down her cleavage. Elle groans, head thrown back, and wraps her legs around him, writhing and keening and crazed. He bites her neck until she falls limp, grinds down into the humming haze of sparks that fizz between them.

As he bites at a nipple through the fabric of her shirt, she wonders if killing Daddy made him come.

It makes her sick to think it might’ve, sicker to know it probably did. She kicks him in the ankles, knees him in the groin, sits enough to fry him with the current he’s teased from her core.

“Bitch,” he spits as his innards heal, hand raised as his skin regrows. She stares him steadily in the eye, searching for that mirror fracture in his soul, the one he hides when hers is plain to see. Two fingers point and she holds her breath, thinking he might finally, _finally_ finish what he started.

But he brushes her bangs back from her eyes, fingers that scar that should’ve healed (never heals), kisses her softly and laughs when she growls her disappointment, slapping him across the face. ‘Moody,’ they call her when they’re feeling nice, ‘unstable’ when they’re not. She once hears Monica say to Micah, “Her mind’s like Humpty Dumpty, baby. Ain’t nothing no one can do to put it back together.”

Wind whips between them, the dust swirling at their feet; the speedster appears behind him. ‘Faster than the speed of light,’ they used to say but the ragged, silver-white scar Elle’s left on her ankle proved that wrong.

“Hey, Roadrunner,” Elle drawls, smirking when Daphne colours at what she’s caught them at, eyes narrowing with her wary, “Hey.”

She dances from foot to foot, never still, eyes darting shiftily from Sylar’s melted shirtfront to the sparks that still jump between Elle’s fingers; Elle wants to zap her until she’s lame. She hates the way it makes her feel when Sylar leers and looks her up and down because a blonde is a blonde is a blonde to him.

Elle wonders if they remind him of the mother he barely knew.

“C’mon,” Daphne blurts, grabs them by their hands, her fingers tight on Sylar’s wrist, tentative, careful on Elle’s. “The main convoy stopped just before the cross-roads; they saw the flames. We need to take them down before backup arrives.”

Her feet whirl like a dynamo on the ground and Elle can feel the charge she’s churning building in her centre. Daphne drags them through the air, Elle’s crazed, high pitched squeal of laughter lost on the wind. And all around her, it feels as if the electrons in the storm-ready air are clinging to her tighter, the hairs on her arms on end with suffocating energy. At the rendezvous, they break apart in a static crackle.

Rebel’s Army, they call themselves but amateurs are what they are, nothing more than children playing soldiers, bright eyed cowboys to Danko’s Indians. They line the dried creek bed, barely concealed within the shadows. And when they turn to greet them, it’s Sylar they all look to. Elle stands beside him, half-forgotten, a fleeting smile of pity all that’s thrown her way.

She wants to scream, to zap and fry them; he’s the one that’s tried to kill them (killed them) so many times before.

“C’mere,” Monica says, waves her over. “Don’t feel bad, Sparky. It ain’t nobody’s fault things didn’t go to plan.”

But Elle ignores her, walks right past her with her head held high, scanning the desert scrub for deeper cover. In her mind she hears the lessons Daddy taught her, the ones she never paid so much attention to when he was alive. _Always alert, always ready. Tough girls don’t depend on anyone but themselves._ Now, she takes his words as gospel, tries to make him proud; Elle crouches down amongst the still sun-warm rocks and waits while lightening flashes on the horizon, dazzling bright and blue.

The thunder rumbles through her in waves; electricity has made the air taste bitter-sharp, like the tip of her tongue pressed to a battery or the delicate skin (Gabriel’s skin) at the inside of her wrist. Dark clouds pass before the moon and she knows the storm is close to breaking (she’s close to breaking). In amongst darkness and blinding bolts of light, she watches as their target slowly comes into range. The transport’s flanked by armoured cars, a dull, military green hard to see in the overcast night. She scans the horizon diligently, east to west and back again, squinting hard to check the shadows for the threats that Daddy warned her might be lurking.

The desert is flat and vast, no sign of reinforcements yet; the gathering wind and the menacing clouds are likely to keep air support at bay. Not that Sylar cares, striding down the median of the road, one hand outstretched to stop the convoy with his mind. His arrogance is like a slap across the face, and she grows tingling numb inside. She creeps around, circling, outflanking them where they can’t see her. Daddy’s dead and she’s dead (should be dead), too, and grandstanding, now, feels too much like _living_.

Boots clatter as they hit the ground; clips snap as they’re hammered home. The soldiers leap from the ambushed jeeps and Rebel’s troops are on them. Elle hangs back and watches the battle: Monica up close amongst them, beating guns with whirling kicks and punches; Sylar’s fighting with his mind, a sadistic sneer twisting his lips. The lightning strikes are getting closer, burning brighter through the sky and Elle thinks it’s nothing compared to what’s thrumming through the battery acid of her veins. She could kill him now while he’s distracted by his own display of power, shock him down long enough to shoot him in the head; in this war they fight the only real sides are his and hers.

But even as they bury him, Elle spitting on his grave, Monica would only hold her tight in gentle arms, Elle a broken babydoll locked up to keep her ‘safe’. “Everything’s gonna be okay,” she’d say to her; “It’s a damn shame,” she’d whisper to the others. “She just ain’t right.” And though kindness can surely kill (is killing her), it wouldn’t be quick enough for Elle.

So Elle takes all that hate that’s crackling blue and hot within her and shoots a jagged, searing bolt at the truck they’ve come to liberate. The back blows off in shower of sparks, disoriented specials cowering within, and as it does, there’s a sudden earth-shuddering clap; the downpour that’s been threatening is finally unleashed. The rain falls fast and icy cold, drenching her through before she knows what’s happened. The electricity coursing from her fizzes and doubles back, crawling like a thousand spiders over her skin. It burns and sparks and fucking hurts, her own hair fried and fizzling on her head, lungs thick with the stench of charring flesh. And through it all she laughs, because the part of her that used to cry (knew how to cry) hasn’t worked since she came back.

Someone’s yelling, “Elle, stop it!” and there’s a screaming that might be her; the pain is a pain that she remembers from burning on the beach. Maybe it’s up to her to finish what Sylar refuses?

But, she’s knocked to the ground, his heavy body smothering hers and even as the skin’s flayed from him, he somehow breaks her circuit. They tussle in the sodden sand; she bites, scratches and yowls, and when they finally break apart, she ignores the helping hand he offers, turns on her heel and runs.

Her soaking clothes weigh down her legs, make her chest feel tight and burn. She sprints over the sinking, soggy ground, away from the battle she can’t win tonight. _Retreat,_ she hears Daddy say, somewhere in her mind, _regroup and next time, don’t mess it up._

“Sure thing,” she whispers to the rain. Maybe when Daddy’s finally proud, she’ll get to see him again.


End file.
